Wednesday, 14 October 2009

'Most of the fairytales we know best were first published in popular books for young children in the mid-19th-century, and many of the heroines of these stories don't do much but wait patiently for their prince to come, or for someone else to rescue them from dangers and enchantments. But it was a skewed sample: there are thousands of folktales in the wolrd with heroines who are smart, courageous and resourceful, like Clever Gretchen. Hans may be "a bit simple" but he also has great determination. Without realising it he sells his soul to the devil in order to become the best huntsman in the world and marry Gretchen. It is she who figures out how he can ask a question the devil cannot answer, and thus break the contract. Anyone who reads this story can learn two things: not to sign agreements with over-friendly strangers, and to follow the advice of wise women.'

So says Alison Lurie in the afterword to today's Guardian booklet 'Wisdom and Folly' and I thought it was a great place to start this post. Too often in the fairy tales we still tell today women are relegated to pathetic princess part or they are the villainess (where as villains such as Bluebeard and his English incarnation Mr Fox have been banished from the children's canon). So in today's booklet I'd particularly urge you to read two stories where the girls triumph, Clever Gretchen, and the tale of The Black Geese - which is a wonderful retelling of a Baba Yaga tale (for more on Baba Yaga tales see SurLaLune's Baba Yaga page - and yes Baba Yaga is a villainess but at least it's often a girl who beats her!).

I've really enjoyed Lurie's retellings and her afterword this week so I can't wait to pick up a copy of her book 'Clever Gretchen and Other Forgotten Folktales', first published in 1980 (I don't normally link directly to amazon from the blog but it's the only place I could find it so the link is here).

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About The Fairy Tale Cupboard

I kept this blog and maintained listings of fairy tale related events, performances and exhibitions from July 2009 until January 2011, when I got the urge for a change and started blogging atGathering Scrapsinstead. I'm very grateful to all the people who read, commented and contributed to the cupboard, and I hope that if people still stumble here from time to time they find something useful to take away.

Why a cupboard?

Well, at the end of From the Beast to the Blonde (1995, Vintage), Marina Warner talks of the store of fairy tales as 'that blue chamber where stories lie waiting to be rediscovered'—but I can't help but imagine it as a big old cupboard—and she then says the store 'offers magical metamorphoses to the one who opens the door, who passes on what was found there, and to those who hear what the storyteller brings.'

The Fairy Tale Cupboard aims to be a little corner in which to gather together all the trailing odds and ends of shifting tales and their trinkets and treasure that float and dangle and sparkle across the web.

Seven

In a list of top UK Children's Literature Blogs this is number seven, which is a bit exciting, especially as seven is a recurring number in fairy tales. Click on Rackham's Ravens for the list.

Articles

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Copyright things

All images on this site are either used with permission, public domain, licensed by creative commons, or created by me. With quotes I always provide sources and, where possible, links. For the rest of the Cupboard's content please see the license below. Thanks.